Aldi adverts banned

Aldi have been eating the market share of many of their larger competitors, but they been told off about three adverts which said that customers could make significant savings when compared with the Big Four supermarkets.

The two TV adverts claimed that a £70 shopping trip at Aldi would cost £98 at other supermarkets, and compared a shopping basket from Aldi woth £33.04 would cost £53.35 with rivals.

An advert in the press said: "When it comes to the crunch, Aldi win every time. Other supermarkets go up, down, all over the place. But Aldi have 'everyday low prices', so you know where you stand."

Two members of the public (who presumably have nothing better to do) and Morrisons (who clearly have nothing better to do) complained about the adverts, saying that they didn't make it explicitly clear that they were comparing the prices for Aldi's own-brand products with branded products sold at other shops.

Aldi argued that people weren't likely to understand what they meant with the adverts, and besides, they put a message on-screen which said: "Other supermarkets may sell 'own brand' products at different prices."

However, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) weren't having it.

They argued that it wasn't likely that shoppers would buy so many branded items when own-brand goods were available.

The ASA said: "We acknowledged that Aldi stated they had not intended the comparisons to represent a 'typical' weekly shop, but to be a comparison between the pictured products only."

"Nonetheless, we considered that was how consumers would interpret the ads rather than as a representation of the savings which could be made by switching from a largely branded shop to shopping in Aldi, and therefore assessed them on that basis."

"Because the ads implied that by swapping from their usual big supermarket to shopping at Aldi, consumers could make savings of the levels highlighted in the ads, rather than presenting the comparison as a representation of the savings which could be made by switching from a largely branded shop to shopping in Aldi, and we had not seen evidence to demonstrate that was the case we concluded that the ads were misleading."

2 comments

Relentless

To add to this, they're constantly advertising Retail positions on DirectGov, there's like 10 posted every single day. So when users 'Sort By' latest, their advertisements are always on the first page. Annoying as fuck tbh